Demon's Curse (Imnada Brotherhood) (39 page)

The pistol’s grip was warm against her palm, the heat of it comforting against the cold infecting her body, numbing her until she felt nothing, knew only the voice. Saw only the point she must aim for in order to shatter Mac’s heart as he stood above his beaten enemy.

She closed her eyes, hoping blindness would delay the moment she must choose, and that’s when she sensed it. A warmth beyond the heat of the pistol and the unrelenting pressure of Renata’s hand over her own. This was a winking, darting sliver of heat that uncurled from a spot in the middle of her forehead, stretching downward, wrapping her in a strange, dancing silver light.

Kill him. For Father. For Alonzo.

Like the blade impaling Alonzo, the force holding Bianca sank deep into her brain until she was left once more bereft of any but Renata’s cold, hollow echo beating against her mind like a hammer strike against an anvil.

Kill him now.

The wards crumbled. The protections disintegrated. Bianca must obey or be rent apart by the strength in the voice.

She lifted the gun. Cocked the hammer.

End it!

Mac’s gaze met hers, his eyes a blaze of knowing. His body awash in blood and gore, humming with unspent violence. He lifted his hand as if in gratitude or farewell.

Tears streaming down her face, Bianca turned and fired, the scream as the bullet struck tearing her apart.

She had done as she was told.

She had ended it.

25

A burning white light seared the backs of her eyelids, pulling Bianca from the tumult of the endless nightmare in which Mac’s broken body was carried away by a giant crow, disappearing behind a wall of silver blue flame.

She opened her eyes on a choking gasp of pained breath to find herself in her Deane House bedchamber, tucked up under blankets and quilts, Sarah’s anxious face hovering above her.

“Donas,” she ordered. “Go tell His Lordship she’s awake.”

The young footman was alive? The last Bianca had seen him, he’d gone down like a felled tree beneath a well-swung cudgel. “What’s happened?” she croaked, her voice rusty, her throat sore. “How did I get here?”

“What do you remember?”

Bianca tried to concentrate, but memories slid away just as they swam to the surface. A pistol’s deafening report followed by the gagging stench of black powder. The slithering, clinging presence in her head
cut off as Renata went down in a spray of blood and bone. And flames licking up walls, over fabric, devouring all in its path as the town house burned. “I killed her. I killed her to save Mac.”

A line creased Sarah’s brow, her mouth thinning. “Rest now, darling.”

Bianca struggled to sit up, but the blankets held her captive, the weight of them pinning her down. “Where is he? He should be here. Tell me where Mac is.”

“Careful. You’ve been unconscious for a week. We thought we’d lost you.”

Why was Sarah evading her questions? Why couldn’t she remember anything beyond Renata’s death? Why unless . . .

The giant crow. The wall of flame. It hadn’t been a dream. She’d killed Renata, but it hadn’t been enough. It hadn’t been in time. Mac was dead anyway. She’d lost him.

She closed her eyes, the grief and ache in her chest almost unbearable.

A draft of cool air hit her face as someone entered the room. She opened her eyes, hoping for a miracle; but it was Sebastian, whose solemn visage only cemented the pain in her heart.

“She’s asking for Flannery,” Sarah murmured, rising to greet her husband. A touch. A shared look. All things Bianca would never know. Would never experience. This was why she’d armored herself. To keep from feeling this small and alone and frightened again.

“What have you told her?” Sebastian asked.

“Nothing yet. Perhaps it would be best coming from you.”

He took the seat beside Bianca’s bed that Sarah
had vacated, his features drawn into austere lines, his golden eyes dimmed.

“Mac wouldn’t leave when he had the chance. He wanted to end the threat to the Imnada. He called it his destiny,” Bianca said, blinking to hold back her tears.

“I wish I could say he’d succeeded, but despite Renata Froissart’s death, events have moved beyond any hope of containment. I fear the secret of the Imnada is a secret no longer. What happens now is anyone’s guess.”

“So Mac died for nothing.”

“Died? I think”—he shot Sarah an accusatory look—“there’s been some confusion. Flannery’s not dead, Bianca.”

She sat up among her pillows despite the sudden whirling of the room and spinning of her stomach. “What? Where is he?”

“We don’t know. Flannery delivered you to us that night. We tried to convince him to stay, at least until we could have him seen by a surgeon, but he resisted. By then I believe instinct had taken over. He wasn’t solely Captain Flannery. Not even solely human. And a house of Fey-bloods, even those who meant him no harm, overloaded his every animal sense of survival. He fled. Disappeared completely, and we had no word for five days.”

“Five days when we despaired of you as well,” Sarah interrupted.

“We sought news of him but heard nothing until a letter arrived this morning. Flannery is alive, though where he is or what he does is not written.”

“He didn’t even wait until you woke or even looked
at you once you were taken from his arms. I’m sorry, sweeting,” Sarah said, her indignation toward Mac evident in her voice.

“Don’t be. He’s still alive. That’s all that matters.”

“But he abandoned you. He left you without a farewell. No word. No nothing. All as if you were naught more than passing acquaintances.” Sarah’s anger for Bianca’s sake touched her deeply. She’d always taken for granted Sarah’s breezy charm and dramatic flair. Only lately had she found that the new Countess of Deane possessed hidden strengths and unflagging loyalty. “I thought for certain he loved you. I’m not usually wrong about such things.”

“He’s doing what he must.”

The gesture amid the flames of the town house. The words they’d spoken. Bianca might wish it had ended differently, but she understood Mac’s leaving.
Trust me,
he’d said. That was what she would do. Trust that he would return. Trust that he would succeed.

Trust that he loved her.

*   *   *

With his hand on the knife at his waist, Mac gazed upon the floor of rose-and-gold marble, the milk-white walls stretching stories above him into an enormous vaulted ceiling painted in dazzling frescoes he could only catch glimpses of in the flickering torchlight. Ahead of him four corridors stretched away into infinity, all of it mirroring his dream, down to the golden light spilling from some unseen source and the sound of burbling water as if a fountain were close by.

The magic of the place carried the raw, elemental power of the true Fey. It beat against his skull like a
sword striking a shield, sank through his healing flesh into his blood like frozen needles through his veins.

He swung around, but where the apothecary shop’s peeling door had been, a row of tall, arched windows now stood. Draped in scarlet velvet tasseled with silver cords, they looked out upon fields of flowers, a haze of mountains on the far horizon.

No way but forward. No idea why he’d been summoned here.

“Hello!” he called out, his voice bouncing back to him in a ripple of echoes from each of the branching corridors.

Ticklish misgivings slid coldly across his shoulders, lifting the hairs at the back of his neck. Why would creatures as elusive and indifferent as the Fey bother with him? He’d have to tread very carefully if he didn’t want to end up a pawn in their schemes.

“Ringrose! Are you there?”

“Who is it?” a familiar voice creaked from down the left-hand corridor. “We don’t want any. Go away.”

“It’s Cormac Cúchulainn. An Imnada of the five clans!” Mac shouted in answer.

A faint circle of light bobbed closer as someone approached. “The five clans . . . the five clans . . . almost fifteen hundred years they fall silent with nary a peep, and in the space of six months I can’t turn around without falling over them.”

The flickering light revealed itself to be a lamp Ringrose carried high above his head, but it was the girl by his side who drew all Mac’s attention. The girl from his fevered dreams. The same short, dark curls. The same trailing cloak of crow feathers over skin as pale as bone.

“He’s the look of the clans about him, eh, Badb?”
Ringrose said. “Don’t know what it is, but I can tell an Imnada from a league away. Two, if I’m wearing my spectacles. So you survived, did you? Happy to hear it, though you can tell that woman of yours she needs to keep her hands to herself. Ungrateful filly.” Ringrose rubbed his jaw.

“I know why you’re here.” The girl stepped forward, her smile welcoming as she reached on tiptoe to put a finger to Mac’s forehead. “You’re here for the death-bringer. You want to know how to harness its power without losing yourself to death and Annwn’s dark paths forever.”

Mac rubbed at the spot, prickling heat bursting behind his eyes. “Who are you? What is this place?”

The cloak’s glossy feathers ruffled with a light whisper as the girl shrugged. “Does it matter? The important thing is that we have what you seek: the answer to your questions.” The girl grinned and grabbed his hand. “Come this way and all will be explained.”

Mac dragged his hand free. “Why should I believe you or accept your help? When have the Fey ever offered assistance without wanting something in return?”

No longer smiling, the girl’s lower lip jutted out in a childlike pout.

“I told you he wouldn’t be a pushover like the last one,” Ringrose snipped. “He’s savvy. Had to be to survive this long.”

“We helped free your woman from Madame Froissart. We offered our protections to her. Now we seek to hand you your greatest desire. And you still question us?”

“I don’t question your generosity or your courage. Only your motives.”

“I told you,” Ringrose asserted. “Too clever by half.”

“Oh, hush, Bartholomew.” The girl waved him off like a pesky insect. “See here, son of the Imnada. We held up our end of the bargain. We told him how to unravel the dark spells binding him. We assisted in gathering what he needed. We even offered up the secret to surviving the death-bringer’s influence. Now he wanders the paths of the dead. Unable to do as he promised. Unable to repay us for our kindnesses.”

“What did Adam promise you, exactly?” Mac asked.

“A simple thing. A small thing. Hardly worth mention—”

“He offered us our freedom, that’s what he did,” Ringrose interrupted. “Should have known better than to trust a shapechanger. Like trusting a bear to watch a honey tree.”

“This is a prison for you?”

Ringrose smoothed a hand over his long beard, his gaze flashing to the arched windows with an expression akin to physical pain. “One without bars or chains but no less painful. We can look upon our lost home, see the heavens spin, the fields beckon, but we are unable to enter without suffering instant death. A sentence most diabolical.”

“What was your crime?”

“We assisted . . . that is, we did not . . . he is not . . .” Ringrose sighed. “We’re powerless to speak of it. Suffice to say, we have served long and suffered greatly. Will you help us, son of the Imnada?”

“And for this you’ll give me the death-bringer. You’ll show me what I need to do.”

“Yes, yes, anything.”

“Agreed,” Mac said before he could think better of it.

Badb smiled and took his hand while Ringrose’s step came almost sprightly. “It is simple, shapechanger. So simple. The answer to both our dilemma and yours is in the blood.”

*   *   *

He stood at the table, months of tireless effort distilled down to no more liquid than would fill a teacup. The surface shone flat and oily, the consistency resembled a melting jelly, and the smell was enough to singe his nostrils and bring tears to his eyes.

Three full turnings of the moon it had taken him. An eternity. Every newspaper torturing him with glimpses of her life. Every letter he began only to feed to the flames, an act as painful as the curse’s nightly awakening. He’d told himself again and again that he did it for her. Should the draught fail, better for her to move on than find herself chained to a man tainted and twisted, whose spirit remained an eternal prisoner of dark magic. But in his heart he knew he did it as much for his own pride. Curse or no, she would stay with him, but pity was no substitute for love, and sympathy was a slow killer of desire. He would see both in her eyes, and that he could not bear.

But now it was done. One last component and Adam’s draught would be complete.

He could face her free of the curse. Free to love her as she deserved to be loved.

With a finger, he traced the three recent scars slicing across his other palm, the tingle of magic fizzing beneath his healing skin. Before he could second guess Ringrose’s final instructions, Mac took up his silver-bladed knife and reopened the newly
healed wounds, blood welling up like a scarlet thread. Tipping his palm up, he let the blood drip one-two-three into the cup, where it lay like a stain before sinking and becoming lost amid the dark, gelatinous concoction.